JOHN NORTHCOTE NASH, RA LG NEAC SWE CBE (1893-1977)
John Nash was born in Kensington, London on 11 April 1893, and was educated at Wellington College. He was encouraged by his elder brother Paul to make watercolours and comic drawings without formal training, and so cultivated a highly personal style. His early achievements were exhibited in 1913, in a joint show with Paul at the Dorien Leigh Gallery, London. He then took up oil painting, and exhibited at the London Group, which he helped to found (1914), and the Camden Town Group (1915). From midway through the First World War, he served in France as a member of the Artists' Rifles (1916-18) and acted as an Official War Artist (1918).
Between the wars, John Nash continued to develop a variety of talents, and became known as a writer and teacher, as well an artist.
He was the first art critic on the magazine London Mercury (1919), and a teacher at the Ruskin School, Oxford (1922-27) and at the Royal College of Art (1934-40 and again 1945-57). A founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers (1920), he produced woodcuts and wood engravings first as decorations to literary periodicals, and then increasingly as illustrations for books produced by the private presses; these include Jonathan Swift's Directions to Servants (Golden Cockerel Press, 1925) and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheard's Calendar (Cresset Press, 1930).
A particular interest in botanical subjects can be instanced in this period by his illustrations to Gathorne-Hardy's Wild Flowers in Britain (Batsford, 1938).
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Nash joined the Observer Corps, returning in the following year to his position as an Official War Artist attached to the Admirality Yet, despite his election as an associate of the Royal Academy (ARA 1940, RA 1951), he gave up painting for a while in order to join the Royal Marines (1944).
Though he had lived most of his life in Buckinghamshire, Nash and his wife Christine moved to Essex in 1944, settling in Wormingford, near Colchester. From there, he visited his Royal College colleague, Edward Bawden, and sometimes accompanied him and Carel Weight on painting holidays. He became deeply attached to the Stour Valley which provided him with an unending source of inspiration for his carefully painted, usually clear-coloured, light-toned landscapes' (Linda Palmer, 1992). His love of landscapes and gardens continued to nourish his work as an illustrator, and he produced a number of his own books, such as English Garden Flowers (Duckworth, 1948), alongside such major achievements as his two editions of Gilbert White's A Natural History of Selbourne (Lutterworth, 1951 and Limited Editions Club, 1972). Alan Horne (1994) has called him 'one of the more important illustrators of the period' to add to his reputation as a highly original watercolourist. He was created CBE in 1964, and awarded a major retrospective three years later at the Tate Gallery. He died in Colchester on 23
September 1977.
Further reading:
Sir John Rothenstein, John Nash, London: Macdonald, 1983
